


paint me a picture

by Crossley



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Married Life, Post-War, Sexual thoughts, minor mental health issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crossley/pseuds/Crossley
Summary: His cheeks heat. “You wish for a painting of me. For your birthday.”“Correct.”The rest of his face ratchets up several degrees as well. “In my… ornotin my… utterly lacking in… completely… ”“Naked, yes.”Byleth wants a naked boudoir painting of Dimitri. Dimitri has... reservations.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 12
Kudos: 267





	paint me a picture

**Author's Note:**

> *sees [this incredible painting of Dimitri](https://twitter.com/bathsheb_art/status/1232864301813239808?s=20)*
> 
> me: that looks like a boudoir shot  
> me: did Ignatz paint this?  
> me: how would they convince Dimitri to pose for this painting  
> me: I bet that convo would be pure gold

It’s late when Dimitri retires to his chambers that night. The chill clings to the stone of Blaiddyd Castle, even in the early months of fall. Yet little of that seeps into their room, with the hearth blazing high, colorful woolen tapestries and thick fur rugs absorbing what cold had not been banished by the fires. It’s almost too warm for Dimitri’s taste, but he would not trade that discomfort for anything in the world.

Byleth sits reading by the fire, in a delicate, spindly froth of a chair that Dimitri has been expressly forbidden from touching. Looking at the ancient oak trunks used to anchor the Blaiddyd ancestral bed, Dimitri cannot fault her for wanting one piece of furniture not built to withstand centuries of Blaiddyd lords and kings. 

His dearest professor. The one who offered her hand at his darkest moments. His _beloved._

Is sitting in her Angry Chair.

(That is not a good sign for the evening.)

“Beloved,” Dimitri says, smiling to cover his unease. “How was your day?”

Byleth looks up and smiles, though her eyes are cooler than usual. She is petty, but not cruel, his beloved. Dimitri has learned, through trial and error, the difference between Byleth’s small annoyances and her true anger; even at her worst, she is ever mindful of his deep anxiety. In turn, Dimitri can give Byleth the space she needs to work through her feelings without being consumed by his own.

Tonight is a small to medium annoyance, by his judgment. “I had a summit with the new leadership of the Western Church. We are making good progress.”

Breathing exercises as she chats about her day do the trick. They even banter a bit about the new Count Rowe, who gives them both headaches, before Dimitri acknowledges the dragon in the room. “Your birthday is approaching, beloved, and you have still not told me how you wish to celebrate.”

Dimitri is a Blaiddyd, born and bred for the cold, but even he shivers at the ice from his wife. “I told you what I want.”

He freezes in place. Dimitri is solid ice, an iceberg, will never unfreeze. He is a permanent fixture of this room now. That must be so, because surely she cannot still be going on about this. She could not possibly… “I… you… so you were serious about that?”

Byleth crosses her arms. “Yes.”

His cheeks heat. “You wish for a painting of me. For your birthday.”

“Correct.”

The rest of his face ratchets up several degrees as well. “In my… or _not_ in my… utterly lacking in… completely… ”

“Naked, yes.”

 _By the goddess._ His entire body now feels dangerously close to spontaneous combustion. Dimitri wills himself to breathe. Slow, deep, even breaths. “Beloved, surely you understand why that is not possible.”

No change in her expression. “I don’t. Explain it to me.”

 _Why not?_ Where does Dimitri even begin? “It would be a gross misuse of funds, for starters, and we are still recovering from the war.”

His wife is his rock, and thus she is as immovable as one at times Dimitri desperately wishes she would not be. “I will pay out of my personal allowance from the Church. Ignatz has agreed to do the painting at cost as his gift to me.”

Goddess, she wants _Ignatz_ to be the one to create this atrocity? She _discussed_ this fool notion with him? “You haven’t—”

“No, he originally offered to paint me a gift for _you_ , but this is what I want instead. It isn’t the first such commission of this sort he’s taken. I hear he’s very kind with skittish clients.”

Dimitri recalls Sylvain’s rather extensive and sometimes terrifying collection of commissions from Ignatz. He wonders, idly, if he should take a trip to Derdriu and speak to Ignatz in his studio about speaking of such things to his wife. Preferably with Areadbhar present. 

“Darling, you’re making your murder face.”

Oh. Right. Dimitri shakes himself out of it. Crude as his beloved’s phrasing might be, her absurdity often shakes him out of darker thoughts. “If it were to get out—”

“It won’t. He’s discreet. You’ve never seen his paintings of Claude or Sylvain, have you?”

He has, actually, as both men hung their respective paintings proudly in their studies over the fireplace. Dimitri has to admit, Claude’s portrait was surprisingly tasteful, even if the myriad symbolic touches in the composition flew well over Dimitri’s head. Something about the inevitability of death and the triumph of human ingenuity? Sylvain’s, however, is… not. Then again, Sylvain is not a tasteful man.

“Beloved, I do not understand why this is so important to you.”

Byleth sets her book aside, looking into the fire for a moment before standing up from her Angry Chair. “We are so often apart, and I would like something I could enjoy when I am without you at Garreg Mach.”

“We have the miniatures from our wedding portrait—”

“Something to keep me warm at night, Dimitri. Is that so difficult to understand?”

Dimitri swallows. He can… appreciate her logic far too well. How many nights has he lain in bed, missing Byleth? Aching for the warmth of her hands, the press of her nipples into his chest, the way she squeezes her cunt around his cock as he’s sheathed inside her? He’s picked up that sedate little miniature in those moments, but a serene wedding portrait does not show the wicked glint of her eye as she rides him to completion, or the way her mouth parts and her legs shake as his tongue circles her clit. 

Now that he _thinks_ about it, he can _more_ than appreciate her logic. Dimitri shifts as his cock twitches to life at the thought of Byleth posing for him as she’s asked him to pose for her. Bent over a chair, perhaps, teasing twist of her lips as she beckons him to pleasure her? Or would she be a lioness stalking him, on her hands and knees even as her eyes flash dangerous and triumphant? How salacious it would be to own a painting of the holiest woman in Fódlan posed in a most _un_ holy way for Dimitri, and Dimitri alone—

“If I,” Dimitri begins, uncertain, “if the situations were reversed, and I wished such a thing of you, would you do it? Pose… in such a manner?”

Byleth shrugs. “Sure. Do you want me to get one done as well?”

Her utter lack of modesty takes his breath away. “Beloved, you are the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros!”

“Artists already sell sketches of me naked on the city streets, usually with my tits inflated twice their normal size. We’d just tell everyone it was another fake.”

They do… they do _what?_ Dimitri’s mind sputters at the implications. Could he pass a law forbidding such blasphemy?

Byleth wraps her arms around his waist now, and Dimitri’s rise to wrap around her in turn. She’s warmer than the hearth’s fire, her small hands an anchor in this world. “What is this really about, darling?” she asks, her cheek pressing against his chest. “I won’t say anything more if you’re not comfortable with the idea, but I know when you’re making excuses.”

Dimitri exhales, tension leaving him as he soaks up the warmth of Byleth’s presence. He inhales, and the tension of the ugliness that still nags his every step leaves him rigid and wooden in her arms. Byleth rubs soothing circles in his back as he strings words out of nebulous shapes in his mind. “The body I… _my_ body. It is not… you know I have always seen it as a tool, and nothing else.”

Byleth hugs him tighter. “Well, I like your body. It’s _yours._ ”

That… that loosens something deep in Dimitri, far better than any protestations or reassurances about his worthiness to be looked upon might have. He knows his relationship with the body he… with _his body_ is far from healthy, and that more days than not he still views his body as an implement of violence that must be contained for the good of all, evidence of the cruelty it has inflicted still lain bare across his skin. 

Yet Byleth has been patient, and careful, with Dimitri these past few years, and in turn Dimitri has begun acquainting himself with the notion _his_ body can offer more than death, that it can offer tenderness, and accept the same in return. Dimitri accepts that Byleth likes his body, even if Dimitri does not. It is not ideal, but forging steady, real things in the chaotic wreckage of his mind has been grueling work, and sometimes, he must accept _good enough._

Perhaps this is an opportunity to push past _good enough._ Seeing his body through Byleth’s eyes has done wonders; perhaps this lens might help Dimitri connect more with what he lost.

He takes Byleth’s chin in his hand and tips her face to his. “I do not wish to be… fully exposed,” Dimitri begins, toying with the composition in his mind. _Something comforting,_ he decides, but detached from his royal status. A fur, maybe. “But angled carefully, and depicted honestly, I think… I think I could do this.” He thinks of Claude’s portrait. “No abstract symbolism, either.”

Byleth beams up at him, making a soft giddy sound that makes his heart raw. “Whatever makes you comfortable.” She squeezes him so hard that for once, Dimitri is the one struggling to breathe. “ _Thank you._ ”

 _No, beloved,_ Dimitri thinks to himself as he sweeps her into the bed. _It is I who am grateful to you._


End file.
